Poetry

KENDRA LIDER-JOHNSON

Kendra Lider-Johnson is a poet based in Harlem, New York City, with a writing-adjacent career in higher education administration and two young children. She is an MFA student in the writing program at Columbia School of the Arts; she primarily writes poetry about family, memory, nature and myth.

LEVIATHAN

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Journal

When I was timeless

I gnashed and spewed

sent the moon

away to call it back

devoured heroes, pulled

music from the bones

of ancient whales. Sirens

adored me with their breasts

and breaths. My turning over

was ceremony, shaking down

ingots and spice, plumes

from tern, merganser.

The plaint of driftwood. Femur

and glass, egg smooth. My torpor

blooms in the green

and claggy deep, some nights

rising to console Orion

and the Bear.